Holographic Universe

And it seems that the resolution isn't perfect.

There's an Article at New Scientist that discusses some surprising results from the GEO600 experiment. The original intent of the experiment was to detect Gravity Waves. While they haven't succeeded at that they may have detected evidence that supports a Holographic Theory of the Universe.

From the article:

For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.

Now as a Speculative Fiction writer this opens up all sorts of possibilities, beyond the standard Matrix and 13th Floor references. It's easy to see where the fringe has taken the concept.

For me the really exciting story here is the human story. Imagine being the lone theorist who sent a package of equations to GEO600. Suggesting a wild explanation for what had till then been dismissed as random noise. The struggle to have your theories accepted and verified. Think of the moment when people realized that this wasn't noise but the very essence of the universe. That can be the end of the story as much as it can be a beginning.

As much as science fiction contains science, it's strength lies in it's ability to showcase the limits of human emotion and ability in novel environments. Science Fiction doesn't need to have spaceships and rayguns to differentiate it from contemporary fiction. Doing research on Gravity Waves in the contemporary world and discovering the fundamental structure of the universe can easily be called science fiction. We have the novel environment of the research facility, the excitement of new discoveries at the edge of human knowledge, and the vindication of our hero, the lone researcher. Very much Science Fiction to me, only today of course it's news.